In 2013, a pixelated fowl named Flappy flapped its method into the collective frustration of smartphone customers all over the place. Dong Nguyen’s Flappy Chook was an very simple cellular sport that may very well be performed with one hand. By 2014, it was essentially the most downloaded free sport on iOS and Android, raking in $50,000 a day for Nguyen earlier than he pulled it from app shops, overwhelmed by its addictive grip on gamers. Quick ahead to 2025, and a creator referred to as Engineezy has resurrected this digital relic right into a a real-life, bodily Flappy Chook machine you possibly can truly play.
Engineezy’s creation, showcased in a latest Hackster.io characteristic, is a feat of engineering that captures the chaotic essence of the unique sport whereas including a layer of real-world attraction. The setup is deceptively easy: a bodily fowl, suspended on a servo-driven mechanism, flaps up and down as gamers information it by means of a sequence of endlessly rotating pipes. However beneath this simplicity lies a posh dance of motors, sensors, and ingenuity. “It’s not nearly recreating the sport,” Engineezy defined within the Hackster.io piece. “It’s about making it really feel alive, with that very same infuriating, addictive high quality you bought from the app.”
Motorola Moto G – 2025 | Unlocked | Made for US 4/128GB | 50MP Digicam | Forest Grey
- Unlocked: Appropriate with all main U.S. carriers, together with Verizon, AT&T, T-Cell and different main carriers.
- Tremendous-bright 6.7″ show + Bass Enhance: Take your leisure to the following stage with a fast-refreshing 120Hz show* and stereo sound with extra…
- 50MP** Quad Pixel digital camera system: Seize sharper pictures day or night time with 4x the sunshine sensitivity—and share lovely selfies with a 16MP entrance…
The fowl itself is the guts of the system, mounted on a servo mechanism designed to imitate the sport’s signature “floppiness.” Engineezy deliberately made the movement unwieldy, utilizing a spring and an prolonged arm to provide the fowl a jerky, unpredictable bounce that mirrors the digital model’s maddening physics. Gamers management it with a button that triggers upward flaps, similar to tapping a display screen.
Then there’s the pipe system, a revolving mechanism that retains the sport’s infinite impediment course in movement. Two dowels create a steady loop, with pipes mounted at various heights to duplicate the randomized gaps of the unique. A separate servo adjusts the pipe heights dynamically, guaranteeing no two runs really feel fairly the identical. This alone could be spectacular, however Engineezy didn’t cease there.
A collision-detection system tracks when the fowl clips a pipe, immediately halting the sport with a satisfying (or infuriating) thud. A scoring mechanism tallies your progress, taunting you to attempt once more once you inevitably fail. “The purpose was to make it really feel such as you’re preventing the identical battle as within the app, however with actual stakes,” Engineezy stated.
Engineezy’s design course of was a months-long odyssey of trial and error, far outstripping the “handful of days” it took Nguyen to code the unique app. The result’s a machine that feels alive, nearly as if the fowl itself is struggling towards the participant’s instructions, similar to within the sport that drove hundreds of thousands to the sting of sanity.
[Source]
